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This thesis identifies the price inconstancies between male and female consumer personal care products, such as razors and deodorants. Economic research suggests consumers purchase products based on their willingness to pay, which depends upon satisfaction granted from the product. If this is true, the question must be asked: what grants these consumers high satisfaction from product purchasing? To answer this question, this thesis investigates the rhetorical effect that stems from product design. Using a rhetorical criticism technique, I analyze how product design allows consumers to project their gender identity. I assert that consumers are interpellated to choose products based on their gender. Once this interpellation takes place, a constitutive rhetoric formed by the product’s design already assumes the consumer’s wants by embedding masculine or feminine ideologies. The analysis shows product design perpetuates clear gender dichotomy and fortifies the belief of gender binaries. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Resources such as energy and water are forecasted to become scarcer in the future. The traditional engineering approach for dealing with this problem can be compromised by the rebound effect. Therefore, it is important that we design products that also encourage users to engage in pro-environmental behaviours, also known as environmentally significant behaviours (ESB). Lead-user theory was first applied to the problem of ESB, resulting in the discovery that resources, when presented in discrete instead of continuous form, enable conservation. The principle was verified empirically. A method was developed to help designers develop products that implement the discretization principle without compromising user needs. Affordance theory was also applied to the problem of ESB. Two methods, one to expedite the finding of affordances and the second to change a product’s affordances to enable ESB, were developed. The application of design theory and techniques to the ESB problem shows promise.

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate how green product design has been practiced within the Swedish furniture industry. Furthermore, to investigate how green product design can reduce the negative impact on the environment. Theoretical framework - The literature used to serve as a base for this paper includes some aspects concerning Green Supply Chain Management, but fundamentally concerns green or environmentally conscious design, motivators for designing „green‟ products, such as legislation, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), internal policy documents and/or green guidelines/certificates, innovation, competitiveness, economic performance, brand image and reputation, and others. Consequently, factors for product design itself were discussed, such as environmentally conscious design, efficient utilization of materials, minimizing waste, time and cost efficiency, types of materials used, etc. Moreover, sustainability aspects are considered vital, namely economic, social and environmental practices, as particular attention is paid to the economic and environmental aspects. Methodology - For the purpose of this research paper, (multiple) case studies were chosen to be implemented. One face-to-face, two telephone and two Skype/online interviews were conducted based on semi-structured interview questions. The data collected is from four companies, two of them preferred to remain anonymous, i.e. Office Furniture and Office Design, and the other two were Kinnarps and Skandiform. Findings - The empirical findings gathered for this research comply with the majority of theoretical data provided. A number of the most important and applicable green product design factors, and more specifically the aim of reducing negative environmental impacts, drive companies to implement environmentally conscious design, efficient utilization of materials, minimizing waste, costs associated, types of materials used, product safety, among many others. Furthermore, economic, social and environmental (overall regarded as sustainability for the purpose of this paper) factors are taken into consideration. Economic and environmental issues were mostly discussed and pinpointed as essential. Conclusions - Green product design should follow a number of important factors in order to reduce the negative impacts on the environment. It is essential to understand a company‟s motivation for designing green products. Nevertheless, such factors as well as economic aspects regarding green design should be complementing each other.

A product pair is two products with similar functionality that satisfy the same high level need but are different by design. The goal of this research is to apply association rule-based learning to product pairs and develop universal design rules to be used during the conceptual design phase. The Apriori algorithm produced 1,023 association rules with input parameters of 70% minimum confidence and 0.5% minimum support levels. These rules were down-selected based on the prescribed rule format of: (Function, Typical User Activity) ? (Change, Universal User Activity). In other words, for a given product function and user activity, the rules suggest a design change and new user activity for a more universal product. This research presents 29 universal design rules to be used during the conceptual design stage. These universal design rules suggest a parametric, morphological, functional, or no design change is needed for a given user activity and product function. No design change rules confirm our intuition and also prevent inefficient design efforts. A parametric design change is suggested for actionfunction elements involving find hand use to manipulate a product. Morphological design changes are proposed to solve actionfunction elements in a slightly more complex manner without adding or subtracting overall functionality. For example, converting human energy to mechanical energy with the upper body opposed to the lower body or actuating fluid flow with motion sensors instead of manual knobs. The majority of the recommended functional changes involve automating a product to make it more universal which might not be apparently obvious to designers during conceptual design.

Engineers recognize the need for innovation in product design, and many methods are available for creating more innovative products and better satisfying customer needs. Empathic Experience Design (EED) is one such method. The EED method exposes the designer to empathic experiences, which are intended to help the designer empathize with customers who use the product under a variety of non-ideal conditions and then transfer that enhanced understanding to an ensuing concept generation activity. This thesis studies the effectiveness of the EED methodology when used in conjunction with three types of empathic experiences: sensory, physical, and cognitive. Experiments were conducted over the course of two years, in which students were asked to develop concepts for a next-generation alarm clock or litter collection device; the resulting concepts were analyzed to determine the originality and technical quality of each concept. The subject group concepts, which were developed after participating in empathic experiences, were compared with the control group concepts, which were developed without empathic experiences. The subject group concepts demonstrated significantly higher originality than the control group concepts, without measurable sacrifices in technical quality, as well as significant increases in innovative features related to user interactions. The method has been shown to be effective for enhancing innovation when the empathic experiences are aimed at sensory and kinematic priming activities that challenge a user’s sensory or physical capabilities. / text

This project aimed to design the interior of a Super Premium refrigerator and a freezer of Electrolux directed to a Chinese market. To carry out this, the user and its environment was analysed in detail in order to get as much information as possible to obtain a successful design. The market was also analysed to see the competitive products that other brands could have. Taking into account all the information collected in the analysis some innovative concepts were proposed and from these concepts a solution was obtained which met all the objectives. This final product fits with the daily life of the user. In addition, it gives a touch of innovation to the market of household appliances.

In this research, a therapeutic light device is developed based on customer requirements. The quality function deployment (QFD) is initially used to transfer customer requirements to design parameters. However, several inherent shortcomings of QFD method are identified based on the design evaluation and the customer feedback of the initially proposed model. In the process of improving the initial model, the correlation information is used in ranking technical measurement and components. A decision-making method is proposed to generate an optimal model for the selection of appropriate components. Kano’s model is applied to enhance the customer’s requirement of “good looking”. The result shows that the improved model satisfies the customer with good overall performance.

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Resources such as energy and water are forecasted to become scarcer in the future. The traditional engineering approach for dealing with this problem can be compromised by the rebound effect. Therefore, it is important that we design products that also encourage users to engage in pro-environmental behaviours, also known as environmentally significant behaviours (ESB). Lead-user theory was first applied to the problem of ESB, resulting in the discovery that resources, when presented in discrete instead of continuous form, enable conservation. The principle was verified empirically. A method was developed to help designers develop products that implement the discretization principle without compromising user needs. Affordance theory was also applied to the problem of ESB. Two methods, one to expedite the finding of affordances and the second to change a product’s affordances to enable ESB, were developed. The application of design theory and techniques to the ESB problem shows promise.